Shining Stars of Europe

The Latvian and Luxembourg EU Presidencies 2015 and the European Commission are inviting participant's to this year's "Shining Stars of Europe video contest" on Development Cooperation.

In a video of 150 seconds, they're inviting creative people to show a fruitful example of development cooperation benefiting all partners involved. How can different societies help each other?

3 winning teams will win 2 000 € each to travel and present their idea or engage in a dialogue project, and will be invited to Luxembourg for the Closing Ceremony of the European Year for Development on 9th December 2015.

Recognizing youth as powerful agents of social change in a world often characterized by intolerance, and cultural and religious divisions, PLURAL+ invites youth to address key challenges related to migrant integration, inclusiveness, identity, diversity, human rights and social cohesiveness, both at local and global levels. Young people up to 25 years old are invited to submit short videos of five minutes maximum in length.

The One Minutes Jr. Competition

The OneMinutesJr. is a video initiative that highlights and celebrates the diversity among youth around the world. Workshop participants produce videos of sixty seconds that are positive and powerful examples of the way visual arts works as a communication tool across cultural, geographic and national borders.

There are three categories and the winners of the best video of each category will be presented with a Tommy award and an HDFlipCam! All nominees also win a place in a The One Minutes Jr./IDFA Masterclass in Amsterdam In November.

UN Women and the European Commission, together with the Belgian Development Cooperation and UNRIC, are today launching a Comic and Cartoon Competition on Gender Equality. The Competition is part of the UN Women campaign “Empowering Women – Empowering Humanity: Picture It!” celebrating the 20th anniversary of the historic Fourth World Conference on Women that took place in Beijing in 1995.

Comic and cartoon artists and art students, aged 18 to 28 years old, who are residents of an EU Member State, are invited to join the competition with their drawings. Among the submissions five finalists will be recognised. These finalists will be invited to Brussels to the Competition Awards Ceremony in summer 2015.

2015 International letter-writing competition for young people

The theme selected for the 2015 competition is: "Tell us about the world you want to grow up in".

The United Nations Millennium Development Goals for the period 2000-2015 are coming to a close and the world body is getting ready to adopt its post-2015 sustainable development agenda to further the tremendous progress already achieved in education, life expectancy, poverty reduction, and disease control.

From 2015 onwards, efforts will continue to achieve “a world of prosperity, equity, freedom, dignity and peace”, states the United Nations, which will propose an ambitious post-2015 sustainable development agenda that is expected to be adopted by UN member states at a summit in September 2015.

The UPU competition gives youth worldwide an opportunity to express themselves on their hopes for the world we live in, and the possible solutions they see to the issues and challenges facing the planet. The winners will be announced in 2015, just before the UN Summit.

The Brussels based United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe - UNRIC provides information on UN activities to the countries of the region. It also provides liaison with institutions of the European Union in the field of information. Its outreach activities extend to all segments of society and joint campaigns, projects and events are organized with partners including the EU, governments, the media, NGOs, schools and local authorities.